...various other thoughts on sports, politics and whatever else is new in my life.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Wake - UNC

In the aftermath (I resisted the Wake pun) of the Wake Forest victory over the GREATEST TEAM EVER I got to thinking about the importance of sports in my life. Is it healthy to get so much joy from a team losing? I mean it isn't like I am rooting for my favorite team to win a game. (Of course I do that.) It isn't like I am rooting for individual players to do well. (Even though I do that as well.) What I did last night was root against a team and against the players of that team. I might as well have been wearing a retro Tim Duncan jersey and singing the Wake Forest fight song, and the only reason I was doing that was because they were playing UNC.

Anyway, I watched every play of the game last night and got considerable joy out of seeing Lawson getting destroyed by the best player (Jeff Teague) on the court yesterday. Also, it was slightly funny seeing Tyler Hansbrough shoot (and miss) a crucial three pointer at the end before getting outhustled for the ball that led to a layup on the other end by Chas McFarland. (McFarland by the way was much better than Hansbrough last night.) The Wake Forest team was a better team than UNC and despite Carolina having what seemed to be 9 lives they were able to pull out the *3 point victory.

*Despite the efforts (22 points on 9 shots) of my favorite UNC player Danny Green. I keep watching Green and I can't understand how he won't be an effective player in the Nba. If you look at his stats you see a complete player who has increased his scoring every year, blocks 4 times as many shots as Tyler Hansbrough, averages nearly 2 steals a game, shoots over 50% from the field and is shooting 48% from three. He is someone that I wish played for Duke or at least didn't play for Carolina. I haven't liked a Carolina player like Green since...well anybody. It will be great to see him graduate from Carolina and lets hope he replaces another Tar Heel (McCants) on the undefeated (in 2009) Twolves team.

After the game I pulled out a bottle of Jameson and toasted the victory of a team I don't care about in a state 1,000 miles away in front of nobody else. And in that moment it goes back to the original question: Is it healthy to get so much joy from a team losing? Should a sports fan only root for teams and not against teams? Or is that even possible? Can you be an Ohio St. fan and not care about Michigan? Can you follow the Redskins without worrying about the Cowboys? These questions aren't ones that I want to answer since as of right now hating Carolina is almost as great as loving Duke.

4 comments:

To respond to the sensible portion of your needlessly inflammatory post:part of being a fan of certain teams is hating rivals/taking joy in their suffering.

Frankly, I wouldn't trust Carolina fan who was ambivalent about Duke, a Redskin fan who isn't thrilled by the fact that Romo plays like Chad Pennington from the 1st of November until the end of the season OR a Giants fan who didn't think that all Dodgers players are closet pedophiles.

You're supposed to hate rivals.

That being said, Wake is Switzerland in North Carolina. Nobody cares about them except for when they beat you.